My White World - A Personal Perspective

For several years I've been consciously challenging myself to be a better person. Specifically, to be a better white person. And it is a challenge. I struggle with the racism that bubbles up from somewhere deep within my own entitled white genetics, my own privileged white life. I gotta own this shit if I want to add some value to this flawed world I live in. I gotta.

I realize it's always been a challenge. I just didn't realize how deep my own shit was buried. How deep my own shit was rooted. And I'm still digging. I wish more folks who look like me would do the same. I wish more folks who look like me would be willing just willing, for fuck's sake to discuss just discuss, for fucks sake race. After all, it's up to us to to make right what we've made wrong. And that truth alone is a truth that too many folks who look like me can't seem to even acknowledge just acknowledge, for fuck's sake.

Yeah. In the name of all that is sacred and holy, I swear I know two (maybe three) folks who look like me who are genuinely willing just willing, for fuck's sake to share candid words around the topic of race without getting all fragile 'n' shit.

I reflect back to the onset of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the weird, awkward, vile 'n' vengeful exchanges that took place... an exchange expressed by a smugly smiling white woman, another exchange expressed by an indignant white woman who waxed woke, and not long after more than one exchange expressed by self satisfied blue liners who denied their own racist mantra, symbol (not to mention "flag desecration"), and their own racism. Such exchanges continue. They continue with subtly worded white arrogance of self-righteous entitlement to be racist while declaring they are not. Well, they are. As is the flag mentioned, sans the blue line, but that's a whole other disquieting deliberation.

Some of these people were acquaintances who I've since trimmed from my life. And others are folks I've considered friends, some who've been trimmed, and others who may still need trimming because they're consistently unwilling to make any acknowledgment of their own racism, let alone take any active responsibility for their own racism. They simply will not acknowledge acknowledge for fuck's sake that it's even a thing.

I want to cut them out of my life, yet I feel held by a hope that keeping a door open might yield some willingness, discussion, and acknowledgment that gives way to efforts to heal the wounds of our own making, efforts that are called for, and overdue. After all, I consider this group friends. But... maybe they're not. ::shrugs::

Yet, if we - the folks who look like me - are sincere in our desire to heal the system, we must be sincere in our desire to heal our selves as well.

In any event, it's exhausting. Even this small, personal stuff. If you have any pigmentation, I don't need to tell you that. If you look like me, I do.

I must.

And I will.

Whether you like it our not.

Because it's long overdue and there's too much at stake. Too much  for fuck's sake.

Even Nona Gaia says so.

To be continued, at my own pace, if I'm strong enough... and brave enough... 

Peace.  🕊

February Medicine and Magick

February is the shortest month in linear measure, and yet, the longest month of winter. For me, anyway. Despite this delightfully mystifying truth, with its arrival it offers the uplifting promise that spring is not far off. With it arrives the European agricultural holy day of Imbolc, a day (days, really, for me)  that I pause to recognize the midpoint between winter solstice and vernal equinox. A time to pause to be with the deep, and often dark, winter reflections that connect us to our mother earth, to our loved ones, our community, to the past/present/future, to the greater good.

Such reflections feel affably fitting with the ritual of seed starting that accelerates this month. With every little seed that is placed in the soil, the promise of spring is planted, along with my prayers of reflection... and projection. 

I choose to leverage February's winter pace, still unhurried and hushed, to indulge in some February Medicine and magick. To indulge in meaningful reflection and projection, before the pace quickens with the expanding daylight of the season's spiral.

I invite you to join my in this experience, this practice, this ritual.
Peace.  🕊